With his dad in the Middle East, this NC State RB used football to stay busy

Brady Bodine isn’t the biggest, strongest or fastest player on the N.C. State football team, but he may be the most respected.

Bodine is the kind of selfless player that provides the underpinning for successful programs. A former walk-on, the running back earned a scholarship last year and has been a leader on the Pack’s special teams. Now in his fifth season, he’s a graduate student, with a degree in biological sciences.

“Brady is a workhorse,” senior running back Reggie Gallaspy Jr. said. “Brady is a humble guy. He’s the kind of guy when at practice, he strains, he finishes, he’s dedicated. He leads the team in a lot of ways a lot of people probably don’t know.

“He probably gets that from his Dad, being in the military, that work ethic.”

Born at Camp Lejeune, Bodine is the son of a Marine. Lt. Col. Wayne Bodine joined the U.S. Marine Corps after college at Oklahoma and has served four one-year deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A lot of college kids have fathers, mothers or family members in the military. Many deal with that nagging fear that something bad could happen, especially in harm’s way, in some of the most dangerous military hotspots in the world.

Brady Bodine said he keeps his days filled, with football, training and classwork.

“I mean, that’s how you handle it, you stay busy,” he said. “I can thank football. I can remember some times being sad about it but I was always on the go, doing something. That’s how I’ve always dealt with my Dad being gone.

“I really don’t ask him too much about his deployments. And my Dad is not like one of the hardcore Marines when he’s home. He’s always joking. He thinks he’s the funniest dude on Earth, always laughing at his own jokes when no one else is.”

While deployed, Wayne Bodine would keep up with Wolfpack football by watching the live streams online. “Sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning,” he said.

It was tough being away. Wayne Bodine said his wife, Connie, was the one who held the family together, who taught their four kids personal discipline.

“They probably had to grow up a little bit more than maybe some of their peers did,” he said. “I’d check in on them but it was probably a little more me making sure they were taken of rather than them worrying about me.”

Theirs was a family on the move, like many military families. Brady Bodine joked he has a hard time doing the math on how many places he has lived and schools attended.

“What I always say is the first time I went to a school for two years in a row was in high school,” he said.

Bodine’s family background is about sports, devotion to task, determination to achieve.

Bodine’s grandfather, Fred Cottrell, was a legendary high school coach in Kansas for more than 50 years. Brady’s older brother, Taylor, is a former college football player and a high school coach. A younger brother, Drake, is a junior at the U.S. Naval Academy. Their sister, Jayda, is an EC Scholar at East Carolina, earning a four-year merit scholarship.

Connie Bodine often has been charged with leading fitness sessions -- for Marines. She continues to be a “Semper Fit” group fitness coordinator for active-duty personnel at Camp Lejeune, Wayne said.

“She used to do fitness competitions and she was always ripped, like six-pack (abs),” Brady said. “She was always pushing us to get better. Her saying has always been ‘Suck it up’ even when I was little.

“She gave us that mental toughness. When my Dad was deployed she was that rock that got us through everything.”

After playing two years for his grandfather in Conway Springs, Kansas, Brady’s final two high school years were at Lejeune. An invited walk-on at N.C. State, he has gotten on the field mostly on special teams but does have six career carries, and has become a more vocal leader among the running backs this year.

“Brady is my right-hand man,” running backs coach Des Kitchings said. “We all love Brady. He was raised right. He has that blue-collar approach -- show up to work, say little and let the work speak for itself.”

A year ago, Pack coach Dave Doeren awarded Bodine a scholarship, saying at the time he had three boys and hoped they all grew up to be like Brady. That’s high praise.

“I feel like he respects me,” Bodine said. “But I’m just a normal guy. To me, everything I do is what I’m supposed to do.”

Bodine was able to join his father on the Carter-Finley Stadium field in November 2016, at the Florida State game. On Military Appreciation Day, Wayne Bodine was present at the pregame coin flip.

“It was even more special that Brady was an honorary captain that day,” said Wayne Bodine, who was deployed to Iraq three weeks later.

Brady Bodine said he will continue to “live the dream” in his final season of college football. The goal: an ACC championship.

“We’ve won games and been to bowls but we’ve still got a lot to do,” he said.

With a drop off in experience at running back after Gallaspy, Bodine may be needed in the backfield this season, especially in pass protection. Add in his work on special teams and it could make for a busier fall for Bodine, who is listed at 5-11 and 195 pounds.

After college, Bodine could go into coaching. Or physical therapy.

What about the Marine Corps? His father now is transitioning to a civilian job while remaining in the Marine Corps Reserve.

“You never know how things go,” Bodine said. “It’s not closed off for me. You never know.”

This story was originally published August 17, 2018 at 4:21 PM.